I was reading the Internet Explorer trick to use application/xml and it uses the Transitional Doctype. Is that a specific example, or can Strict Doctype be also used?

SP

The IE trick works just as well with strict as with transitional.

SC

Is it harmful to send text/html content-type under XHTML 1.0 Strict Doctype?

SP

It is not harmful to send strict as text/html. Sending XHTML as text/html is independent of DTD used. XHTML Media Types is a good place to go for information about which media type to use where, and what it means.

SC

If the content-type is sent with text/html, doesn't it defeat the purpose of using the XHTML Doctype then?

SP

Sure. If you send it as text/html, then the browser thinks it is HTML, not XHTML, so all the error correcting that happens with HTML happens.

SC

So might as well send HTML?

SP

It depends what you are trying to achieve. The text/html trick is for the transition period until all browsers can accept XHTML properly.
IE is the only one holding out, but I'm sure they will change eventually. Even their software needs XHTML in places. Infopath for instance produces and consumes XHTML, not HTML.

SC

Why is the main page of W3C is using the meta content-type as text/html, but the actual headers of the page is sent as application/xhtml+xml? From what I've read, If XHTML is used, meta should not be used for the header (and as it also appears to have no effect)

SP

W3C home page uses content negotiation, but only to work out which mime type to use. It uses the same content so the meta is there for the HTML case (personally I would have left the meta http equiv stuff out).

SC

Thank you for your time and clearing this up, Steven. Much appreciated!